Sturtz Stuff

  Ezekiel 18:1-4: The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: “‘The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?     “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die."              This was a popular saying among those in exile. It suggests that the reason why the exiles are suffering is because of what their parents had done. Our parents rebelled. Our parents were stiff necked.   Our parents forgot about the poor and the needy. Our parents desecrated the temple. Thus the reason why we are hundreds of miles of home is because our parents sinned and God is punishing us for what our parents did. Our parents ate sour grapes and now our te...

Stringfellow opens the final chapter of A Private and Public Faith -- The Fear of God--with with a powerful idea: The ministry of the Church as the Body of Christ in the world is the same as the ministry of Christ. The ministry of Christ is the ministry of a servant in the world and for the world--a servant of the world in the name of God. Like Christ the Christian is called to be "a servant in the world" and "a servant of the world in the name of God." What does that look like? Stringfellow continues with one of those passages of his that routinely takes your breath away: Perhaps it is helpful to notice a few things about the ministry of Christ. One is that the ministry of Christ is a ministry of great extravagance--of a reckless, scandalous expenditure of His life for the sake of the world's life. Christ gives away His life. The world finds new life in His life and His gift of His life to the world. His is not a very prudential life, not a...

I must admit that I have not seen or even heard of the movie Lars and the Real Girl. Yet, after reading this little bit by Richard Beck (professor at Abilene Christian University) my interest is peaked. Here is a little clip from the movie on  YouTube .  The video clip shows a discussion by church members if the main character Lars should be allowed to attend church. The concern over Lars attendance has to do with his delusional relationship with a life size sex doll that he has named Bianca. Although Lars relationship with Bianca is very chaste it is still odd. As the movie continues many friends of Lars begin to treat/accept Bianca like she was a real person. This acceptance opens the door for Lars to deal with his real issues. Eventually Bianca and Lars are welcomed when they attend church. So I watched the video clip from the movie and found myself laughing and concerned at the same time. What I saw in the video clip ...

Larry Hurtado is a scholar of the New Testament and Christian origins. In August 2011 he retired from the University of Edinburgh which he served from 1996. He has written much on the subjects of early Christianity and early "devotion to Jesus". Recently he submitted a paper about God's love and Christian ethics. Here is a summary of the paper in the words of Larry Hurtado . . . I was honored to be invited again to the Second Nishan Forum, held May 2012 in Jining, China, and to contribute again a paper to the conference. I have now placed the text of my paper (PDF) under the “Selected Essays” tab. The jist of my paper is that (1) the NT emphasis on the biblical deity as loving the world, and this love as the prime basis for God’s acts toward the world, is rather novel in the Roman religious environment, and (2) that this divine love serves rather consistently as the basis and pattern for the actions that believers are called to exhibit. I make no claims about how c...

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2 (NIV) A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth. 2 It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, This passage by the master teacher of Ecclesiastes offers a thought that is counter intuitive. We like life and enjoy living. There are many stories of people who will undergo chemotherapy, the loss of a limb and organ transplant surgery in order to continue living. We will fight to live another day. This is a good thing. It is a God given desire placed in humans. We have taken a wrong turn when we turn our back on life. The general sense of this passage offers a sobering reminder that one day you will die and the living should take that to heart. Life is a precious gift. This is something that those who have faced their own mortality know all too well. Death has a way of waking us up to the meaning of life. The month of June is always an odd month for me. My father p...

Here is a review of the Steve Jobs book by Lee C Camp who is the Professor of Theology and Ethics, Lipscomb University. The full review can be found by clicking here . Read the following to get a flavor of the review. Jobs was notoriously impatient. His tirades were so well known that, in the early years of Apple, one executive had the job of keeping Jobs in check and calming the wake of wounded feelings. This notorious impatience was coupled with what Walter Isaacson, in his brilliant biography "Steve Jobs," called a "binary view of the world," in which all things were either/or -- a product was either "shit" or the best ever; a person was either a hero or a "shithead;" and a meal or a particular shade of color would either "completely suck" or be "absolutely perfect." Jobs always insisted that this edge was merely being "honest." If something "sucked," he must tell you to your face. That Southern soci...